Wednesday, June 02, 2010

My Milkshake Brings All The Boys To The Yard

Okay, so this blog has nothing to do with the junk in my trunk.

It has more to do with the skills it takes to make said milkshake.

Across the country, a new breed of people is retreating to their kitchen to make a living. Some of these folks are college grads - fresh faces struggling to find work and turning to another talent. Others are unemployed people who are treading water until they rejoin the workforce.

And still others are people who just love the near-spiritual experience of making food with their own two hands.

The New York Times wrote a great piece on this yesterday. Artisans are taking the talents and traditions they learned from their mothers, their friends and lovers and experimenting to create even more creative offerings. These boiled peanuts and gourmet pressed sandwiches and "cake pops" are dragged to neighborhood markets, where foodies with drooling, slack jawed mouths wait with bated breath.

God, doesn't that sound heavenly?

Really, either end of the relationship is a winner. To be a food maker - someone with a culinary talent that is sought out by the hordes, that sounds absolutely divine. To be at a party and have Sally exclaim in a stage whisper, "Emily is Aunt Emily?... Harry doesn't even like sweets."

That would be, like, five kinds of awesome.

To be the food eater - also a winning proposition. My friends and I like to occasionally go to a watering hole in Covington that secretly serves the most delicious pickled, hard-boiled eggs. They're not really on the menu, and not everybody knows about 'em, but if you ask for a guy and give him a wink and tell him you know about the eggs, he'll share some with you.

And they're dynamite.

Cincinnati is really experiencing this renaissance of foodies branching out and trying something different. forkheartknife with its sometimes-catering-sometimes-serving concept in Over-the-Rhine is pretty innovative and is drawing rave reviews from the foodie community. Same with Picnic and Pantry in Northside - small lines of artisan crafted foodstuff and day-of menu items.

Brings me back to the days when Paul Newman started making salad dressing in his kitchen.

Okay. Maybe not.

People are returning to smaller batch-made food, instead of the monolithic, serve-the-masses-with-unoriginality offerings you can get at the store with a looming shadow in Downtown Cincinnati.

What foodie secret do you think deserves telling in Cincinnati? Who's emerging as an amazing, local food artisan? Know a place that serves up these unusual offerings that's perhaps off the beaten path?

I DO make a pretty damn good milkshake. A little bit of half and half. Quality ice cream. A few other secrets that I won't divulge. Because if I teach you, I have to charge.